I am on record as having written/stated the following:
The timing and circumstances of Wilfried Nancy’s appointment were poor.
It was more important for Celtic to hire Columbus Crew’s head of analytics than Nancy and they should do both, ideally.
Nancy’s intermediate to long-term outlook at Celtic offered promise ala Ange Postecoglou’s tenure, but that the short term was perilous due to #1.
Sticking with Nancy at least through February was the least bad option given the risks likely to be unleashed by sacking him and Paul Tisdale given the importance of having some semblance of coherence in the January transfer window.
While open to the possibility that Tisdale was not up to the job, I could discern no clear evidence from the prior transfer windows given the lack of visibility on who was responsible for what, and would reserve judgement until analyzing the January 2026 window. The only evidence available was the signing of Araujo, the targeting of now-English Premiere League player Jocelin Ta Bi, and links to Niko Sigur.
Obviously, the club decided to go down a very different path, so today I review what credible evidence there was/is to support those decisions.
I will not review the Martin O’Neill timeline, as his CV is well known.
However, Shaun Maloney’s seems less so outside of relatively surface-level information on where he has worked.
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